Shaken and stirred.

January 31, 2013

See No Evil

We learn today that former Senator Chuck Hagel, now President Obama's nominee to be Secretary of Defense, thinks that Iran's elections three years ago were free and fair (never mind the disqualification of opposition candidates, the manipulation of votes, and the suppression of dissent) and thus the Iranian government is ‘legitimate’ (see the exchange between Hagel and Senator Sessions). Even President Obama wouldn't go that far!

This guy really is a reality-be-damned crackpot, on par with Ron Paul but without the taste for liberty. Nebraska is glad to be rid of him; it would be a terrible thing to inflict him on the military!

Recent Reading

Larry Niven: Fallen Angels(7/26/2015) This is absolutely brilliant! It's slightly outdated on some details – 25 years is a long time for computer technology – and the authors misidentified the solar contribution to global warming (it's an indirect effect), but this is a must-read. (****)

Xenophon: The March Up Country: A Translation of Xenophon's Anabasis(4/5/2015) For some reason, a mercenary Greek army and the Persian prince who hired them thought it a good idea to march 1,500 miles on a shoestring budget to fight the king (the ambitious prince's brother) close to his capital - fricking Babylon! This worked out miraculously well and the Greeks got the best of the fight until the prince was killed in battle. Then came the march home, the long way through mountainous terrain, poorly-clothed (and -shod), hungry, without pay, and with the pissed-off (and probably embarrassed) king and all his petty satraps on their asses. Did I mention that the Greeks were mercenaries who thought that the army was a democratic institution? Good times!

Margaret MacMillan: Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World(3/20/2015) From Germany and France to eastern Europe to the Middle East to China and Japan, the Treaty of Versailles screwed the pooch pretty thoroughly. Wilson was so hung up on the creation of his League of Nations that he couldn't be bothered with trifles such as justice and principle – except the ‘principle’ of his own ‘Fourteen Points’, which didn't exactly impress – and Clemenceau was insufferably demanding. (E.g., the ‘indemnity’ – charging Germany not just for reparations but also for the economic value of lost Allied men – was unhelpful and contrary to existing and stated principle. But the French were in no mood for forgiveness.) But Keynes's concern about the supposedly unbearable size of reparations was baseless. Unfortunately, the German people took Keynes's BS seriously, another terrible injustice among many as they saw it.

Another failing was the absence of proper war crimes trials for, at the least, the officers responsible for the murderous German behavior in Belgium – Falkenhayn, Ludendorff, and Bülow spring immediately to mind – rather than simply forwarding their names to the German government for trial at home (!) where they were either acquitted or allowed to escape and disappear without official trace. (!!) Also, allowing the German army to march home in good order, rather than forcing them to surrender publicly in the obvious disarray of defeat, encouraged the German public to believe that they had not really ‘lost’ but had rather been ‘stabbed in the back’ by traitors and Jews. Merde! (****)

Barbara W. Tuchman: The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914The chapter on the Dreyfus Affair is brilliant and well worth the price of admission. Other chapter on Wilhelmine German politics and culture (and music) is also highly instructive for those of us who are still trying to grasp what in hell could lead Germany into two world wars. Many chapters just pointlessly bore, but the whole is worth the reader's time. (****)

Edzard Ernst & Simon Singh: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine(10/09/2014) Treatments that have been demonstrated to be safe and effective quickly become conventional, leaving only quackery and worse in the ‘alternative’ category. Examples of such proven bogosity include homeopathy (although that is now a marketing term used very loosely), aromatherapy, and acupuncture. All have been demonstrated, in fair trials, to be bunk. Laetrile is worse than bunk and no, it's not an effing ‘vitamin’. (****)